Freeland is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) on Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington, United States. At the epoch of the 2010 census the population was 2,045. The town usual its declare based on its origins as a socialist commune in the early 1900s: in the eyes of its founders, the land of the town was literally to be forgive for whatever people. Some of the first settlers were veterans of a prior experiment in socialism, the affable Equality Colony.

Some Equality Colony dissidents, led by George Washington Daniels, incorporated the Free Land Association in 1900 and normal the colony upon land they purchased through James P. Gleason of the Fidelity Trust company. Members purchased dividend-paying shares in the association accretion fund and the machinery fund. The association deposit operated according to Rochdale Principles, and shares in the increase were sold to non-residents as skillfully as attachment members. Because members could present their house with dividends from their shares, the founders considered the home to be “free”. By 1902, however, the colony announced that new settlers would have to purchase land outright, as the idealistic land-financing ambition based on share dividends had not worked.

Daniels platted five-acre tracts with broad streets to form the original townsite. Additional plats were added on summit of the adjacent several years.

Freeland considered itself a long-suffering profit-sharing attachment and rejected the rigid communal structure of other colonies upon the island. They described themselves to the Whidby Islander as “simply a concurrence of socialists co-operating on semi-capitalistic principles.”

During its forward years, Freeland had no local school, sending its kids three miles across the island to Useless Bay. The nonattendance of roads contributed to the disaffection of the colony, although Daniels’ son-in-law, John H. Prather, purchased several boats to allow freight and passenger assistance between Freeland and Everett, the nearest town upon the mainland.